Iceman-Gambit: A Night At the Bar
by Glamorous Glue
Summary: Iceman is having some strange dreams...and some strange feelings for his teammate Gambit! The beginning of my Gambit-Iceman SLASH! Chapter 2 is now updated! More to come!
1. The Dream

Chapter One

Bobby woke to a room filled with humid steam. Peeling the damp sheets from his body, he swung his feet out of bed. _What could have made the mansion so humid?_ He wondered as he wiped his sweaty forehead with a pillow. It was July, but the Mansion's air conditioning was state-of-the-art. Hell, it was better than that, it was _Shi'ar_.

As Bobby turned on the light, he realized the bathroom door was open just slightly, hot steam and the sound of running water billowing out of the crack. _That's odd, _Bobby thought to himself, _I don't remember leaving the shower on last night. _But that wasn't the oddest of it. He could hear someone singing also. The voice, distorted by the sound of the water, was deep and horribly off key.

Bobby entered the bathroom hesitantly, drawing in moisture from the air, creating a coat of ice to cool and protect his body. He could now see there was indeed someone in his shower. He couldn't identify the intruder, but he could see the dark outline of its body washing itself. He looked at the floor to see the person's clothes strewn about in a trail. 

Bobby traced a pair of men's jeans and shoes, a stained undershirt and a belt, back to the jockstrap that lay in his bed. "A jockstrap?" Bobby wondered, picking it up. He had never owned a jockstrap in his life. "Okay," he said to himself, "who the hell is in my shower?"

He marched into the bathroom, determined to find out. Grabbing the shower curtain with his iced hand, he pulled it back, revealing…

Beep! Beep! Beep! 

Bobby rolled to glare at the digital alarm on his nightstand. Groggily, he slapped the snooze button before turning over again into sleep. 

Beep! Beep! Beep!

His tongue too tired to articulate it, Bobby let out a mangled curse. He shot a small pulse of freezing cold from his finger, encrusting the alarm clock in ice. That was third one destroyed in such a manner this month. Bobby was not a morning person. "Gotta stop doing that," he told himself, climbing out of bed.

The time was frozen at 2:30 A.M. It was Wednesday morning, his scheduled time for private sessions in the Danger Room. Bobby often wondered how a senior member of the X-Men like himself could have gotten stuck with a pre-dawn training time. Even Bishop, the hardened militant from the future, was asleep at this time of the night! 

_What did Rodney Dangerfield always say? "I don't get no respect!"_ _That's the story of my life_, Bobby thought as he slid out of his boxers before jumping into the shower. _Except Rodney Dangerfield turned his into a career as a stand-up comic…what have I done? _He turned the faucet to its coldest setting, prepared for an icy blast. He loved cold showers. They were great way to wake up and get rid of those early morning hard-ons. 

Water running over stiff muscles, his senses returned from the fog of drowsiness. In bits and pieces, the water's sounds brought his dream to surface. _The shower,_ he thought, _the shower was running and someone was in it! _He remembered the jockstrap. _Was it a man? A man was in my shower?_

Oh well, Bobby knew better than to get worked up over the meaning of some stupid dream. He had been having nightmares involving the shower since he saw "Psycho," on the "Late, Late Show" when he was a kid. It was probably just Norman Bates. 

Slipping into his light-blue X-Men bodysuit, he headed to the Danger Room for an early morning session.

****************

Iceman sighed. _That's the last of them_, he thought, dropping his ice sheath to look at the Brood Queen, imprisoned in a five-foot layer of his ice. He felt like he had been in the Danger Room for hours now, fighting robot after robot, running holographic scenario after holographic scenario. 

The current simulation involved an infestation of the Brood, a particularly nasty alien race from the far side of the universe, resembling large, green scorpions with rows of needle-teeth and the nasty habit of laying their eggs within mutant chest cavities. Charming, really. 

Leaning against the Queen's frozen prison; Iceman smiled at her through the ice. "Sigorney Weaver eat your heart out!" he said cockily, thinking of how easily he defeated this last pod. They weren't nearly as terrible as Wolverine and Storm had portrayed.

He headed perhaps a bit too confidently towards the Danger Room's padlocked exit. Not questioning why the simulation hadn't deactivated, Iceman reached the door's control panel, entering the security code. "Oh-four-oh-five-nine-three…"

The sound of cracking ice came with a sudden hiss of steam before Iceman's finger could enter the final digit. _That can't be good… _He turned in time to see the Queen swinging her massive tail, before landing it against his skull with a splitting "thud!" 

Iceman's world spun in a hot, stinging ache as he hit the floor. Instinctively, he sheathed his body in ice, the cold numbing the pain of shredded skin and shocking him out of his stupor, giving him wind to assess the crisis. The black fuzz of a concussion filled his eyes but he could hear the Queen's footsteps and feel her hot breath. She was descending upon him quickly.

Raising his arms above his head, ice shooting from his palms defensively, he created a cocoon around himself. He breathed a sigh of relief. The cocoon would keep him safe for a while but he could already hear the Queen gnawing through.

Dizzy, hanging to consciousness like torn skin, numb pain spread across his head so quickly he did not feel the ice collapse above him, the Queen breaking through the wall with her vicious mouth. He barely noticed her tongue licking him as everything went black.

*****************

"Wake up, Frosty!"

Bobby woke wearily. As light filled his eyes, a pain emerged in his skull, but within a moment it vanished just as quickly. His vision returning, he realized he was lying on a stretcher in the medical bay, Jubilee leering above him, cracking pink bubblegum in his face. 

"Scram, Lee," Bobby groaned at his teenage nemesis, pushing her away. She shuffled off with a disappointed shrug, having hoped for a more explicit response.

"You took quite a beating, Robert," Professor Xavier spoke up from his hoverchair by the foot of Bobby's stretcher. "I've taken the liberty of stimulating your neural pain-killers with my mind," he explained. 

Bobby shuddered, having never adjusted to how the Professor used his telepathic abilities without permission. Even after so many years, it remained a bit disconcerting.

"You know better than to run a Level Four Combat Scenario without proper supervision," Xavier reprimanded him, as he administered peroxide to Bobby's cheek.

"I'm sorry Professor," Bobby moaned, swinging his feet out of the stretcher, "I'm used to the old days when the Danger Room was nothing more than faulty gymnastics equipment and a flame thrower."

"It was never _that _bad," Xavier reminded him. "Besides, if you dated the Shi'ar Empress you'd accept her gifts of highly advanced alien technology too."

"I suppose so, Professor. I guess I just lost myself in there. That's all."

Xavier looked at him with doubt. "Yes, you seem to be doing that a lot lately. This is the third time this week that you've ran a Level Four Scenario. Monday it was the Sentinels, Tuesday Magneto and now a pod of Brood. I'm glad you're taking interest in your training but this is a bit excessive. One might assume you were overcompensating for something."

Jubilee leered at him. "Aww…is Frosty feeling a little insecure?" 

Bobby shot her a deadly glare, an indication of his annoyance.

Which was all Jubilee needed before deciding to continue. "Hmmm, let me guess…is it your powers? Doesn't your uncanny ability to make snowmen and lame jokes cut it anymore?" she laughed.

"So says the 'Human Sparkler.' Let's just say the X-Men have more than one novelty act on their roster," he shot back.

Jubilee's face flushed with a mix of anger and embarrassment. "Watch it, Frosty! Those 'fireworks' happen to be 'intense surges of plasma' and they can melt you a new asshole!" 

Professor Xavier cleared his throat. "Jubilee…_don't you have some homework you can be doing? _I don't believe you finished your report on Xenomorphic Biology…"

"_Actually_, I did," she said after faking a moment's consideration. She obviously wasn't getting his point, or more probably she didn't care.

"_Jubilee_…" Professor Xavier warned, his tone growing impatient.

Bobby figured he'd do the little imp a favor. "Forget about it, Professor," he told him, "I'm out of here." With that, he hopped off the stretcher and headed for the med-bay exit.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk Robert?" Xavier asked as Bobby exited.

"No, I'm just going to take the day off to recover. You know, do some shopping, pedicure, facial, all the good stuff," Bobby said, turning to face him with a carefree grin. Bobby hadn't learned, like most X-Men, that emotions could not be hidden from the world's strongest telepath.

"Alright," Xavier conceded. "But aren't you forgetting something?"

"Huh?"

"You've got latrine duty today, Robert."

"Latrine duty, _my favorite_," he sighed, his enthusiasm swirling down the toilet.

Jubilee pointed, laughing smugly.

"And you can join him, Jubilee," Xavier added.

Jubilee looked genuinely shocked by her sentence. "Latrine duty!" she screamed! "But you've never given me latrine duty before!"

"Make fun of your teammates and I will."

"No fair! _Everyone_ makes fun of Drake!" 

With that comment, Bobby grabbed her towards the exit with him. "Come on Lee, I'll make sure to leave some of the Beast's fur in the drain just for you…"

"You'd think that alien girlfriend o' his could whip up some robot to do this for us?" she muttered as they headed to the bathroom. But no one was listening.

  



	2. As the World Turns...

                        Chapter Two

      "This is so degrading!" Jubilee cried. "I mean how many times have I helped the X-Men save the world now? Like umpteen million? And I still have to do chores?" She was slowly mopping the bathroom floor between complaints as Bobby kept busy scrubbing the scum under the toilet seats.

**      "You're preaching to the choir, Lee," Bobby told her. Actually, it wasn't preaching it was more like whining obnoxiously, but Bobby decided to keep that to himself. The less time he spent bickering with Lee, the faster he could spend some much needed time at the pool.**

      Finished with the toilets and scrubbing the sides of the shower stalls, Bobby turned on the showerhead to rinse them off, the sound bringing back faint memories of his dream the previous night. Bobby had almost forgotten about it, which was his intention he supposed, after his incident in the Danger Room. It was still as baffling hours later as it had been that morning.

      "Hey Drake! The whales called they want their water back!" Lee shouted at him, waking him up from his daze. Bobby realized that he had been standing there for almost five minutes thinking about his dream, letting the shower continue to run all the while. "Oh sorry," Bobby said, turning to see Lee peering out the door into the hallway of the men's dormitory.

      "I think we're done Jubilee," he said, heading towards the door. She pressed her hand to his chest, stopping him in his tracks.

      "I'm watching this," she whispered to him.

      Curious, Bobby stuck his head out the door, to see Remy and Rogue standing in the hallway outside of Remy's room. Rogue appeared to be crying, a dozen roses were crushed on the floor by Remy's feet. "What's going on?" he asked the young teenage busy body.

**      "I'm not sure," Jubilee told him. "Gambit tried to give Rogue the flowers and then she threw them at him and started crying. Now shut up, I'm trying to hear this."**

      Bobby felt guilty that he was strangely interested in Rogue and Remy's little affair. It was like a soap opera, with some new twist each week, and all of the X-Men, from Cyclops to Jubilee, watched with interest. Now, Bobby could hear Rogue and Remy's voices.

      "C'mon, cher," Remy pleaded. "Give me a chance."

      Rogue's words came out from under a layer of sobs. "You don't understand Remy. If you so much as stroke me with a fingertip you'll be unconscious for hours. How are you going to have the kind of relationship you want when you can't even touch me?"

      There was a pause before Remy spoke up again. "But Rogue, I already know all that. I don't need to touch you to love you."

      "Sorry, Remy. I doubt that," she said. "I know your type. You're a charmer and a flirt. You don't go any longer than two days without getting laid."

      Remy didn't say anything.

      "Go ahead!" Rogue told him, "Tell me I'm wrong."

      There was a tense silence between them. Bobby and Jubilee held their breath in suspense. This week's episode was especially good, what would happen next?

      They watched as Remy tried to console Rogue, attempting to wrap his arm around her, but she pushed him away with a single gloved hand and pointed to the bare skin of her shoulders. "See, Remy," she said. "You've already forgotten."

      With that she flew down the hall, passing her two eavesdroppers as she did so. With the sound of his door slamming, Remy returned to his room dejected.

      Jubilee turned to Bobby. "Wow! You just gotta love those two!"

      "It's not funny Jubilee," Bobby reprimanded her. "Did you see how much he hurt Rogue? Gambit's such a jerk teasing her like that!"

      Jubilee looked at him surprised. "Geez, Drake. Don't get so hot and bothered about it!"

      Blushing, Bobby suddenly felt very embarrassed by his outburst.

      Suddenly, a knowing look came over Jubilee. "If I didn't know any better," she said with smile, "I might think that you had a little crush on our Southern Belle?"

      Bobby thought about it for a moment. The idea seemed ridiculous, having never really known Rogue that well. They had been members of the X-Men at different times in their lives, but she was beautiful, and vivacious, and sexy. At least that's what everyone was always saying. Maybe he was jealous of what Gambit had with her. All he knew was, when he looked at them together he felt angry and confused.

      Bobby put the thought out of his mind. "Whatever, Lee. I just don't like Gambit, that's all. He's an asshole. I've always thought so."

      "_Sure," Jubilee said, with a tone that suggested, a little less than subtly, that she thought his response was forced. _

      Bobby looked at his watch. "Shit!" he exclaimed. "I was supposed to start monitoring Emma Frost fifteen minutes ago! I completely forgot." Bobby darted out the bathroom towards the service elevator.

      "I'm not going to let this go Drake!" Jubilee shouted as he left.

            **************************************

      Bobby sat in the medical bay for the second time in one day, watching the medical monitors this time, rather than finding himself attached them. It was Bobby's job every Wednesday to spend a few hours with Emma Frost, the mansion's resident comatose mutant, observing her heart and brain wave activity for any unusual spikes. 

      But seeing as how Miss Frost had been a pretty reliable vegetable for the past five months, Bobby spent most of his time on duty reading the magazines scattered around the med-bay. Today's choices included Hank's _Scientific American, Xavier's __News and World Report and Rogue's __Redbook, none of which really appealed to Bobby. So he decided instead to take a nap, an easy task in the med-bay._

      Within seconds, Bobby was dozing off to the soft electrical hum of the equipment but just as he was slipping into a light snore, Bobby woke from his sleep, startled, and certain that someone had whispered his name.

      He looked around the med-bay, but couldn't see that anyone had entered. Bobby shrugged, closing his eyes again, deciding he must have been dreaming.

      Then the voice moaned again, "Bobby Drake," still a whisper this time, not louder but more intense and seemingly right into his skull. Bobby opened his eyes, still finding himself alone, but certain now of what he heard. 

      Glancing over at Emma Frost, he was struck by a wild notion. Could she have tried to communicate with him despite her coma? It wasn't impossible, Frost was a powerful telepath after all, not as powerful as Charles Xavier but she could definitely give Jean Grey a run for her money.

      Bobby shrugged off the idea. If Emma Frost was anything more than comatose it would have registered on the monitors, but reviewing her print outs, he could see her brain waves remained flatlined. Besides, why would the former White Queen of the Hellfire Club try to communicate with him? Why not a big shot, like Xavier?

      Bobby couldn't quite understand why Charles insisted on aiding her, one of the X-Men's deadliest adversaries, at the mansion. The stories he had heard painted Emma Frost as a nymphomaniac and a bitch. A single glance at her standard attire, a white leather corset, confirmed the first charge while the second seemed like an understatement. Among other highlights of her criminal career, Frost had tried to kill the X-Men, kidnap Kitty Pryde and take control of Storm's body.

But old cueball always did have a habit of harboring criminals, Rogue and Wolverine being good examples. Supposedly, Chuck saw some good in Miss Frost that the rest of them hadn't, and Bobby had to admit her story was rather sad. She had been left in a coma after an attack by an evil mutant known as Fitzroy. The madman had killed all of her young students, the Hellions, and left her for dead. If Jean Grey hadn't rescued Emma, she'd be dead too.

      But Bobby had enough concerns without Emma Frost or Remy and Rogue's sordid love affair. The chief of those concerns went by the name Opal Tanaka, Bobby's girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, depending on who tells the story.

      Bobby refused to believe that it was truly over between Opal and he; not after two years of dating and growing close. She had even accepted the fact that he was a mutant, and a superhero for that matter. Or at least he thought she had accepted it. 

      "There are those of us who prefer to live in the real world--" she had said only days ago, "a world I guess I thought could have pulled you into when we first started dating. Believe it or not, 'Iceman;' many people are more than happy with their normal, ordinary, boring everyday lives!"* 

      Bobby had to admit, the words hit close to home. Opal always did have a way of pushing his buttons, especially when she was angry. At least she hadn't brought up the fact that longest relationship of his life had just ended like all the others, with a dejected and bitter girl running off disappointed. 

      Bobby sighed, wondering if he'd ever meet a nice girl, without any baggage, and settle down. But how he could ask someone to love him when he was running off fighting Magneto or Apocalypse every weekend? Being an X-Man it seemed was the ultimate baggage. Why couldn't there be an Icewoman out there? Surely, she would understand. 

      Bobby looked at his watch, seeing his time with Miss Frost, quite thankfully, had ended. "Later toots," he said, blowing the comatose woman a kiss, "it's been great but you're starting to give me the creeps." 

* Opal's dialogue comes from UNCANNY X-MEN #305 by Scott Lobdell

                  ********************************

      Bouncing up the stairway to the men's dormitory, Hank McCoy felt the stairs bend beneath his three hundred pounds of blue fur and muscle. With two mighty leaps, the X-Man codenamed Beast reached his destination: the room of Bobby Drake, his best friend and team member.

      "Hey Bobby! You in there?" Hank roared, pounding the door with his oversized fist. He had searched the entire mansion looking for Bobby, but he had found all of the boy's usual haunts, from the pool to the billiard room, abandoned.

      "What?" Bobby moaned from inside the door.

      "It's me!" Hank cried, "You're old buddy Henry."

      "I know. Wadda ya want?"

      Hank scratched his head. Bobby was supposed to be the one X-Man who _wasn't moody. "Are you going to let me in?"_

      "I don't want company."

      "What's up Bobby?" Hank asked, concerned. "You've been locked up in your room all day. Is something wrong?"

      Bobby let out an unconvincing, "no." 

      "Is it about Opal?" Hank asked. There was a brief moment of silence before he heard the door unlock from the inside, Bobby finally letting him enter.

      "You heard, huh?" Bobby asked him as Hank entered, taking a seat on Bobby's bed. "Who told you? Was it Jubilee?"

      "I heard it from Rogue after Danger Room sessions yesterday. She said Opal gave you quite the verbal assault in front of a crowd of her neighbors. Tough break, Bob."

      Bobby was sighing listlessly, kicking the carpet with his toes. "Why do all my relationships end like this, Hank? I mean, what do I do wrong?"

      "It's not your fault," Hank said, "Opal's just not suited for dating an X-Man, that's all."

      "But you date a human. Trish is just a normal woman and she doesn't have any problem with you being an X-Man." 

      "Trish is a journalist," Hank said, trying to think an excuse to cheer up his friend. "She likes adventure."

      "So you're saying I should date someone in the news media?" he asked. "Can you get me Katie Couric's number?"

      "I'm not saying that my friend," Hank said smiling, "but I will suggest that you come with Sean and me to Harry's Hideaway tonight. Have a few drinks and take a load off. It'll do you good."

      Bobby shook his head. "I don't think so, Hank. I'm just not feeling up to it."

      Hank sighed, disappointed. After twelve hours of repairing the Blackbird Jet with Sean Cassidy, he was looking forward to a Boys Night Out now more than ever but it seemed all his pals were too busy or just plain anti-social to join him. Scott had a date with Jean, Warren referred to Harry's as a "dive" and Logan's plans for the evening involved taking a six-pack into the woods and getting drunk alone. Now, it seemed Bobby was going to follow the trend and wimp out on him

      "Alright," Hank conceded, heading for the door. "But next time the Professor asks me who programmed the Danger Room to simulate Natasha Kinski; I just might remember the name of a certain ice-spewing mutant horn dog."

      Hank watched Bobby turn red. Whether it was anger or embarrassment he didn't care, so long as his threat worked. "Alright," the younger man said, "I'll come. Just let me get my jacket."

            ***********************************

         
  



End file.
